It was 5:00am or so when I awoke after a shockingly chilly - yet pleasant - night’s sleep. I could see Monte @Blackdawg hanging out behind his truck, waiting for the sunrise from my tent door. Figuring I'd let him enjoy the peaceful solitude, I donned my clothes and made my way to a spot 50' or so away to capture the morning, the colors joyfully doubled by the surface of Wells Lake. I'd later hear from Monte that I'd been ninja-like in my approach. As he told the story to Dan @drr and Mike @Digiratus, he described completely silent…
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Get out, go big, an explore. This is the stuff we live for!
August 28, 2019. The day had been hot, but it cooled right down overnight - much nicer for sleeping, we all agreed. And sleep we did - it was 8:30am before the last of us finally climbed down from our tents, having missed the sunrise entirely - a cloudless sky transitioning from deep blue to orange, then to pink and finally blue again. We all set about making our breakfast - coffee for Mike @Digiratus, cereal for me, an amazing looking breakfast burrito for Dan @drr, and - of course - Donettes for Monte @Blackdawg - as the sun beamed…
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August 27, 2019. Most of the trips I do require a full day - or more - of freeway driving just to reach the trailhead, so you can imagine my delight when we decided to do a trip on the west coast. Sort-of. At least, our meeting location was only four hours away - in the tiny little community of Mazama, WA. From there, we'd head north - to British Columbia, Canada - where we planned to run The Whipsaw Trail and then make our way north and west to Molybdenite Peak - before turning south again for the United States.…
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July 26, 2019. Positioned well above the horizon, sunrise would have been one of the best if just a few clouds had made an appearance in the sky. Without them, an orange glow an hour or so before the sun peaked out was all we got. Shucks, right? 😉 The mosquitoes were out in full force again, buzzing and gathering around the windows of the tent - our scent like sweet sweet nectar to them. Not that our scent - after 10 days on the road - was anything but a sweet sweet nectar, mind you. 😉 Not wanting to…
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July 25, 2019. I wasn't sure how sunrise would be given that we were in a bit of a bowl around Dworshak Reservoir - with no line of sight to the horizon - and no clouds in the sky - it could be a complete dud. And for the most part, that's what it was. Unimpressed, I went back to sleep. Having made good time yesterday, we still had a lot of making up to do - given our little brake caliper issue on the Lolo Motorway, and the fact that we'd spent two days completing the second stage of the…
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July 24, 2019. Rocky Point proved once again to be one of the best camp sites of our trip and we slept well through the night. Wanting to capture sunrise, I was up early with a new idea - video - which also allowed me to catch another 90 minutes of sleep and yet still not miss anything! Let me tell you, it was quite pleasant to wake up with the sun streaming in through the door at our feet, it's orange morning light illuminating the lookout visible through opposite side of the tent. Even with the extra sleep,…
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July 23, 2019. We couldn't have chosen a better spot to setup camp when we pulled up to Rocky Point lookout. Our view east was spectacular, and the clouds and lightning storms from the night before had cleared out, leaving just enough moisture in the air for an amazing sunrise - the orange on the horizon slowly emanating out to a pink before transitioning once again to the deep blue of the clear sky. Unlike most mornings where a few shots of the glow™ are enough for me and I climb back into bed, this morning was something special. I…
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July 22, 2019. Wanting to get an early start to the day so we could try to get ourselves through all of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route's Stage 4 from Elk City to Darby along the Macgruder Corridor, we were both up and out of the tent right around 7:00am - the plan to show up at the awesome Elk City General Store right as they opened at 8:00am. Or so we thought. But now I'm getting ahead of myself. So let's back up for just a minute... As usual, I set my alarm for o-dark-thirty to see if I…
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July 21, 2019. Camped deep in the valley next to the South Fork of the Salmon River, getting up for sunrise wasn't even an option for us. The dual-sport bikers had we'd met the night before were surely later to bed and earlier to rise than we were, but that was just fine by us - we needed our beauty rest, bad. So it was that when the sun finally did start warming the tent that we figured we might as well continue on our route - I mean, it was either that or go back the way we'd come…
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July 20, 2019. Hard at work as we slept, the fire fighters working on the Vader fire had it contained - as far as we could tell given the complete lack of rising smoke - by the time my alarm went off at 4:00am. As fires go, it hadn't been a huge, but at 443 acres, it had taken a crew of two Type 6 Engines, one Type 4 Engine, one Type II Initial Attack Fire Crew, a plane load of smokejumpers, two Type I Helicopters, four Type III Helicopters, an air‐attack, two Interagency Hotshot crews, and 2 dozers to rein…
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July 19, 2019. The night passed uneventfully - a cool breeze blowing off the lake, a refreshing relief from the heat of the day. Now technically in Mountain time, I'd set my alarm for the absurd hour of 5:30am to catch sunrise - hoping that I'd be able to catch a bit of light despite our position relative to the horizon. It wasn't long, I was a bit too late even at 5:30am, and we've surely seen more dramatic sunrises, but it was still an enjoyable few minutes of color to see splashed across the sky. Plus, it was still…
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July 18, 2019. Having arrived late the night before, we were not up early. We'd slept well next to the East Fork of the Jarbidge River just outside Murphy Hot Springs, and it was a little after 10:00am when we rolled into Jarbidge, NV - the official start of the Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route. Our first order of business was to fill up with fuel. I wasn't sure that we really needed to do this (it turns out we didn't), but I wanted to make sure we at least started off on the right foot for this trip. Plus, we'd…
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We've run two Backcountry Discovery Routes (BDRs) in the past - Oregon in 2017 and Washington in 2018. So, when it came to planning for this year, we decided that we'd run what we thought would be one of the coolest BDRs out there - Idaho. Little did we realize that it would mean spending most of July in the beautiful state - we had, after all, just finished exploring the southeast and then the central parts of Idaho a couple weeks before we'd planned to embark on this south-to-north traverse of the state. Not that we were complaining - this was clearly,…
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July 7, 2019. It rained on and off through the night, but it was warm enough that the tents dried off quickly each time it did. And of course, cloudy skies meant no sunrise - and for me, more sleep! Having circled the trucks in camp, things were reasonably peaceful save a single growl from Venice at some point during the night. The next morning, Kyle @KP907 noted that he'd seen a coyote just a couple hundred feet from camp - the likely impetuous for the verbal warning. The on-again-off-again rain continued as breakfasts were prepared, and we all took…
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July 6, 2019. I went to bed hoping that our position on the ridge would result in some stupendous sunrise photos, but as morning rolled around, it was clear that ridges around us had been inappropriately placed by the Earth, and that all I was going to get was a little bit of orange on the horizon and a view of Croesus Peak out the window. Thanks a lot, Earth. Like the previous morning, our plan was to meet another truck before setting out on our next adventure, but this morning we were set to meet much earlier in Stanley…
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July 5, 2019. For most of us, the night passed peacefully. It was reasonably warm and calm, the creek flowing through the meadow gurgling rather than rushing by. I mean, there was that one UTV that revved its way by camp around 1:00am, but what can you expect on the 4th of July, really? Unfortunately for Mikey @pizzaviolence however, the action in his tent more than made up for the rest of us. Riggs, who'd been feeling a bit under the weather the previous day had an accident around 2:00am. Luckily, according to Mikey, it was mostly contained to the…
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July 4, 2019. We always seem to get our trucks reasonably level when we're out in the woods, but something about the level driveway we'd parked in made for an extremely easy night sleep. Or maybe we were just tired from our previous three days - gallivanting around the southeast parts of Idaho. At any rate, we were up late (for us) when Ben @m3bassman opened the garage door at 8:00am - our planned departure time giving us plenty of time to get dressed, eat breakfast, and get the tent put away. In fact, it was still a few minutes…
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July 3, 2019. Hoping for a colorful sunrise framed by City of Rocks' formations, I was up early - right around 5:00am - greeted by clouds on the horizon and a showing that was at best, "meh." You can't win them all, and I was quickly back to bed for a couple more hours of sleep. Still, we were up earlier than we'd been the previous mornings - because we had no idea how long today's adventures into the Sawtooth National Forest would take - and we figured it would be a good idea to evacuate our adopted camp site…
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There's nothing better than a night with temps in the high 40's a light breeze, and a river gurgling along below camp. Coupled with our position at the bottom of a valley, there was no reason to get up for sunrise, and it was nearly 8:00am before we finally poked our heads out of the tent to take in our beautiful surroundings - the creek below, the hot springs to the west, and pinnacles to the east. And, we did it mostly because we knew that it wasn't going to be long before it got even hotter than the previous…
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The day started out just like any other. Well, any other where the previous included a 12-hour drive from home to the starting point of our next adventure. So let's back up for a moment... We'd arrived at Bruneau Canyon Overlook just after 10:00pm the day before - our drive from home behind us, capped off by dinner with Ben @m3bassman, Kirsten, Mikey @pizzaviolence, and Amber at their local taco joint - Enrique's - a place they'd recommended a year before when we spent Two-and-a-Half Days in Idaho. Having grown up in California and with a few great taco trucks at…
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